From somebody living in Beijing:
While the "street food" pictured here is available in Beijing, it's really only for sale in one place: the night market, a kilometer of gew-gaw sellers and touts that now has exit and entrance guards and a roped off path that you shuffle along like one of the lamer disneyland rides. It's full of tourists but like everywhere else in Beijing that attracts tourists 95% of them are Chinese people in from the countryside.

I've been there once and the worst thing about it is the sea-horses. Sea-horses are endangered and it makes me really sad to see both westerners and chinese people eating them just for the novelty.

Other weird things are available from grubbier, more traditional restaurants, like duck head, bird tongues, and pig skin made into strips of aspic but the actual street food sold from carts and booths is pretty tame. The most common is jian bing, a fresh-made egg crepe with onions and a crushed up fried cracker folded inside. Then there's ears of corn, steamed dumplings, sausage on a stick, and sweet potatoes cooked on an oil drum welded to a bicycle. These are the things you see people eating every day for lunch, though lots of middle-class people I know consider such food "not clean" and eat nearly every lunch at KFC.

Dog, mentioned by a commenter, is for sale, but only at Korean restaurants, which here are generally quite fancy affairs here you can grill or boil your own meat right at the table. There used to be Chinese places that had dogs in cages out back, but all my friends say they're long gone.

People are dieing and that should stop, agreed.

And then?

I want to know what the aim here is, what's the plan?

Is it to restore the Dalai Lama? Autonomy for Tibet? Few Tibetans speak any language other than Mandarin, and the Han Chinese have by this time settled their businesses and homes in the country. Not to mention the major industrial development that, while only marginally beneficial to Tibet, is the backbone of Chinese infrastructure, providing gas, coal, and power to the nation.

You know what? Let's muster the political will, let's save Tibet. I'll give Richard Gere any means he deems necessary. What exactly would he like to happen? The Han ejected? Government officials fired? China denied heat and power? And then what?

I know that we white do know how everybody else on earth should be running their lives, but for the love of christ this one time could we please think it through?

(once again they should stop putting down the riots violently, no argument there)

"Now if the government in Beijing could just stop exploiting its citizens, persecuting Tibet, destroying its rivers and air, denying Tiananmen Square, stifling free speech, exporting poisonous products, and serially abusing human rights, this new China might really be on to something. "

Guh, I was just a kid in the 1980's but did every article about Japan end this way?

Is that just the deal? visit a place, get a sense of its life and culture, experience wonder and a bit of awe, and then of course poohpooh the whole affair?

'this new China might really be on to something. Of course if it keeps doing anything the slightest bit hypocritical or unjust, we will be forced to nuke 'em into orbit.'

I'm living in Beijing right now, and while yeah it's very different from the states it's certainly not any filthier than an American city, and that's amazing when you consider the poverty of most of Beijing's citizens.

And we're back on the poisonous goods angle? Right before I left everybody's chuckling advice was 'well don't use the toothpaste!'

All your toothpaste is made China! That's the deal! Product safety is not the best, you're supposed to inspect imports!

I am a citizen of a country where one in every 100 citizens is locked day and night in a cell. Somehow I don't see that little fact used to conclude every profile of Manhattan's new museums or Chicago's restaurant scene.

Moment of sanity: the fling about Beijing being filthy is off base. The trees are imported because Beijing is a desert and nothing but dune grass grows on its own. However every other fact in the article, especially about the irreverence of modern society, is spot on. I especially like the way he describes the hurried but serviceable concrete building style.